Restrictions to Access

No restrictions. Open for research.

Restrictions to Use

No usage restrictions.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Neil G. McBride Papers #5684, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Received from Neil G. McBride of Knoxville, Tenn., in March 2016 (Acc. 102556).

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Processed by: Amelia W. Holmes, May 2016

Encoded by: Amelia W. Holmes, May 2016

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• Coal Employment Project.
• Coal miners--Employment--United States.
• East Tennessee Research Corporation.
• McBride, Neil G.
• Public interest groups--Tennessee.
• Rural Legal Services of Tennessee.
• Women coal miners--Tennessee.

• Coal Employment Project (CEP) Records, Archives of Appalachia, East Tennessee State University

Neil G. McBride was born on 12 December 1945 in Dallas, Tex. He received his J.D. from the University of Virginia in 1970. After graduating, he worked for a year as the Southern Director of the Law Students Civil Rights Research Council in Atlanta, Ga. He then worked for a year as a staff attorney on Aviation Consumer Action Project, established by Ralph Nader. From 1973 to 1978, he worked as a staff attorney for the East Tennessee Research Corporation, a rural public interest law firm funded largely by the Ford Foundation that provided legal and technical assistance to community organizations in East Tennessee. In 1978, McBride left the East Tennessee Research Corporation and founded Rural Legal Services of Tennessee, which provided civil legal aid to low-income people in the Appalachian coal fields of East Tenessee. It also worked with Save Our Cumberland Mountains (SOCM) on at least two of their cases. From 1978 to 2001, he served as director of Rural Legal Services of Tennessee. Beginning in June 1987, McBride served as the registered agent for the Coal Employment Project, a non-profit focused on gender equality and discrimination issues in coal mines. He is currently General Counsel to the Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee and the Cumberlands. In 2009, President Barack Obama appointed McBride to the Tennessee Valley Authority Board of Directors.

Biographical information taken from "Field Notes - Neil G. McBride" in The Southern Oral History Program Collection (#04007).

The Neil G. McBride Papers consist of professional papers created or collected by McBride over the course of his career. McBride was a lawyer who worked for and organized a number of public interest groups. Papers in this collection document his work with the Coal Employment Project, East Tennessee Research Corporation, and Rural Legal Services of Tennessee. Materials include routine correspondence, clippings, printed materials, and a few other items.